10 Essential New Year’s Resolutions [You Can Actually Achieve]

If you’re anything like me, you’ve noticed that you’re older than you used to be.

With this in mind, here are a few things you can do to improve your situation:

1] Accept the fact that media and reality are two entirely different things, even if you’re the only one buying it.

2] Understand that your sense of relevance is tied to the health of both your physical body and your financial portfolio in equal measure.

3] Know that dating beautiful young women is a minefield, not because they’re difficult to find, but because they’re difficult to read.

4] Understand that women who embrace their own objectivity will expect you to pay for it.

5] Look at life more from the perspective of a human food chain and you’ll find love in the most unexpected places.

6] Embrace psychotherapy when you feel uncomfortable talking to anyone else, but understand that it can be as addictive as heroin, and sometimes, just as expensive.

7] Practice mindfulness before delusion plays stand in for sanity.

8] Realize that life doesn’t care about you, so you have to figure our how to care about yourself. It still won’t care, but whatever.

9] Accept the fact that not taking your meds is the same as committing infidelity.

10] Worrying about not achieving your New Year’s resolutions is worse than simply not achieving them, so think carefully before committing to anything.

Now you have 10 New Year’s resolutions that will serve you better than diets and exercise by a factor of 1000.

Is Youth, In Fact, Wasted on The Young?

Hardly.

Does anyone actually believe that a bunch of rich and entitled Baby Boomer rock stars could create The Dark Side of the Moon?

The following is a list of 10 Boomers who followed a similar fate:

1] David Bowie

2] Mick Jagger

3] Eric Clapton

4] Robert Plant

5] Jimmy Page

6] Bob Dylan

7] Billy Joel

8] Elton John

9] Alice Cooper

10 Neil Young.

Obviously, there’s something to be said for youth and immortality, in spite of the contradiction in terms.

“Manorexia:” It’s Not Just Women

For nearly a decade celebrity jeweler Stephen Webster, 56, pictured with Christina Aguilera, fought a private battle with anorexia [and depression].

At his lowest point, Stephen Webster, who is 5’10” tall, weighted 112 pounds.

By comparison, Mick Jagger, who is 5’10” tall, weighs 161 pounds.

I’ll let you ponder that for a moment…

~~~

Okay, now that you have that image firmly in your head, you should know that after fighting through his disorder, he is now 154 pounds.

Hardly robust, but not on a feeding tube.

So, good.

~~~

Men of my socioeconomic demographic are often found at the gym, if only because they appear to live in them.

Most are in their late 40’s to early 50’s because that’s about as far as you can push back on the aging process and still land on your feet.

By the time you hit your late 50’s, you can land on one foot, but it’s not as pretty.

Having said this, anyone who’s spent a lifetime keeping fit will tell you that at least a tinge of obsession is necessary to maintain it.

For myself, eating is usually a nightmare.

Let me phrase this another way: For myself, eating is something I have lodged firmly in my head from the moment I wake up.

It’s not like it was back in the day when I looked forward to a breakfast of half and half over Frosted Flakes and two whole eggs over easy in actual butter, which I also applied to toasted white Sunbeam bread.

I know. Great right?

Now it’s 6 boiled egg-whites and a bowl of steel cut oats with almond butter and a banana.

If I ate the first breakfast for a week I’d die on the gym floor.

First, I need good carbs, ones that burn slowly, hence the oats.

If I ate the first one my blood sugar would spike, then crash…me along with it. And if that didn’t do me in the saturated fat would.

See, blood sugar becomes a big deal as you age, particularly for men like me who workout a lot.

While I am not diabetic, I do experience bouts of hypoglycemia when i don’t take in enough calories to carry me through an intense workout.

For more on hypoglycemia, click here: https://www.med.umich.edu/intmed/endocrinology/patients/Hypoglycemia.htm

I experienced the same thing as a young man, but now I’m more conscious of it, as I am of everything else because I feel more physically vulnerable than I did back then.

This is what I refer to as age-acquired neurosis.

So not only am I not eating anything I feel like putting in my mouth in an effort to avoid all the aforementioned problems, but I also want to keep my body fit and trim.

Now the plot is as thick as pack ice:

1] I think about when to eat so that I have the energy necessary to fuel my workouts.This alone is exhausting.

2] I carefully consider healthy food choice alternative, which is also a pain in the ass.

3] I want to maintain a healthy appearance, which is predicated on the previous two line items. Now eating is kind of like a second job.

Back to Stephen Webster and many others like him, physical appearance can become an obsession after a while because it’s so hard to maintain.

Add an addictive personalty, ambition and vanity, and you’re completely and utterly screwed.

I know men at my gym who are on the hamster wheel, working out 3 times a day in race to beat time.

They never do.

Most of them are anorexic and in complete denial.

They eat just enough to get through their grueling workouts and them eat again to get through the next one in line.

They have no personal lives. And their interactions with others is limited to discussions about workouts and diet.

I’m sure you know a few yourself.

Pity them. They are in pain even if they don’t realize it.

Their bodies are shutting down, their lives have burned down to an ember of balance.

In this sense, they’re already dead.

If you think I’m being overly dramatic, check out Stephen Webster’s struggles for yourself:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3328368/My-10-year-battle-MANOREXIA-s-not-just-women-Celebrity-jeweller-Stephen-Webster-reveals-despite-gilded-life-tortured-fear-eating.html

OVERVIEW

I will always dance delicately near the edge in order to meet my needs without falling off the cliff.

It’s a struggle we all face as we age and want to live healthy, balanced lives.

Some turn to “youth-enhancing” drugs to help maintain their strength and low body-fat without having to severely restrict their diets, but they are killing themselves in other ways as they swap one addiction for another.

Average people have no idea what I’m talking about.

But I don’t know any of them.

10 Ways to Getg Through the Holidays Without Landing Back in Therapy

As everyone knows, the holidays are psychologically challenging.

Pharmacies are sold out of sedatives and liquor sales go through the roof.

Of course, children don’t know anything about this because reality is kept at arm’s length so we can live vicariously through them.

~~~

The holiday season often brings along stress and depression – to name just two [a thousand come to mind].

And no wonder.

The holidays present a ridiculous array of demands — parties, shopping, cooking, cleaning, interacting with people you haven’t seen in a long time under fragile pretenses.

But with some practical tips, you can minimize the stress.

You may even end up enjoying the holidays more than you thought you would, which is better than nothing.

According to the Mayo Clinic staff, here are 10 ways to keep stress on the low end of crazy:

1] Acknowledge your feelings. If someone close to you has recently died or you can’t be with loved ones, realize that it’s normal to feel sadness and grief.

It’s OK to take time to cry or express your feelings. You can’t force yourself to be happy just because it’s the holiday season.

2] Reach out If you feel lonely or isolated, seek out community, religious or other social events. They can offer support and companionship. Volunteering your time to help others also is a good way to lift your spirits and broaden your friendships.

3] Be realistic. The holidays don’t have to be perfect or just like last year.

As families change and grow, traditions and rituals often change as well.

Choose a few to hold on to, and be open to creating new ones. For example, if your adult children can’t come to your house, find new ways to celebrate together, such as sharing pictures, emails or videos.

4] Set aside differences. Try to accept family members and friends as they are, even if they don’t live up to all of your expectations.

Set aside grievances until a more appropriate time for discussion.

And be understanding if others get upset or distressed when something goes awry.

Chances are they’re feeling the effects of holiday stress and depression, too

5] Stick to a budget. Before you go gift and food shopping, decide how much money you can afford to spend. Then stick to your budget.

Don’t try to buy happiness with an avalanche of gifts

6] Plan ahead. Set aside specific days for shopping, baking, visiting friends and other activities.

Plan your menus and then make your shopping list.

That will help prevent last-minute scrambling to buy forgotten ingredients.

And make sure to line up help for party prep and cleanup.

7] Learn to say no. Saying yes when you should say no can leave you feeling resentful and overwhelmed.

Friends and colleagues will understand if you can’t participate in every project or activity.

If it’s not possible to say no when your boss asks you to work overtime, try to remove something else from your agenda to make up for the lost time

8] Don’t abandon healthy habits. Don’t let the holidays become a free-for-all.

Overindulgence only adds to your stress and guilt.

9] Take a breather. Make some time for yourself. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do.

Find something that reduces stress by clearing your mind, slowing your breathing and restoring inner calm

10] Seek professional help if you need it. Despite your best efforts, you may find yourself feeling persistently sad or anxious, plagued by physical complaints, unable to sleep, irritable and hopeless, and unable to face routine chores.

If these feelings last for a while, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional.

According to reality as I know it, here are my top 10[not that I’m dismissing any of the aforementioned]:

1] Schedule a therapy appointment

[at least a month in advance of the holidays so you don’t have to go back for another 3].

2] Make sure your medications are up to date and readily available

[in the event of an unforeseen catastrophe, including all of them].

3] Make sure to plan for time to workout.

The stress relief will help defray the cost of refills.

4] Meditate.

What I do is stare at my hands and see if I can get my fingers to stop shaking.

5] Wear something comfortable to gatherings so you can stretch out and cross your legs when tensions run high.

I find myself massaging my feet a lot.

6] Drink.

Don’t get wasted, but a pleasant buzz will help pass the time as you read the liner notes on a Pink Floyd CD compendium.

7] Breathe deeply and often.

When someone asks you what’s wrong, just tell them you like to breathe a lot. That usually does the trick.

8] Bring headphones.

I have found that headphones are a great way to break through stressful situations, even if you have to put them on during bathroom breaks.

9] Pretend to pay attention.

Even if the conversation is boring enough to trigger unconsciousness, just smile and stare into space. I know everyone’s crown molding by heart.

10] Accept the fact that your nieces and nephews are younger than you are, and will probably find a way to challenge your chronological authority.

This is normal, particularly with males, as they attempt to bludgeon their way to the top of the human food chain.

Whatever they say, just nod and go back to staring at the crown molding.

FINAL NOTE

It is a myth that suicide rates are higher during holidays than at other times of the year.

This is because holidays maximize social connection for most people, no matter what it may look or feel like.

What’s [really] the Best Workout for Baby Boomers?

56yr Old Crossfit Masters Competitor Ken Greaves

I was scouring the web for inspirational articles covering training regimens for masters athletes – and let me tell you – there aren’t many.

Instead, what I came across this absurd piece written by two 20-year-olds who went on to win a contest for their advice to older men and women.

Here’s a teaser on the topic of cardio: The American College of Sports Medicine recommends working at a level that is “hard enough to raise your heart rate and break a sweat,” but still allows one “to carry on a conversation.” This ensures that the body is being stimulated but not so intensely that there is a risk of overexertion.

Comment: If I can carry on a conversation while doing cardio, I’m not training. [Note to you 20-year-olds on your Iphones while walking on treadmills].

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/best_over_60_workout.htm

Myth #1:

“Because hypertrophy and maximal force production are not likely to be goals for the 60 and up crowd, free weights and muscle specialization will not be necessary.”

Really? Says who?

As a 60-year-old power-lifter and cross-fit enthusiast, I train primarily with free weights because they allow my entire body to participate in the stabilization process. I also focus on certain muscle groups that help protect my body when lifting heavy.

No wonder I don’t have back problems. People who tend to sit on machines all day do. So yes, hypertrophy is a big deal as is maximal force production.

Myth #2:

“While teens may be able to handle three days of lifting per week with seven days of cardio, this is not realistic for older adults.”

I train with weights 3 days a week and incorporate 5 days of cross-fit style cardio. I take the weekends off because i have a life outside the gym. And by the way, most teens can’t keep up with my workouts.

Myth #3

“Intensity, too is different [for older athletes], as more tender joints and less conditioned lungs and other muscles are potential issues for older adults to consider.”

While joint pain is always making itself known in one area or another, it’s been doing the same thing since college. So I just work around it until it heals.

Myth #4

“While free weights are often favored by serious gym-goers and exercise enthusiasts, machines are preferable for older adults.”

I don’t know anyone my age at my gym who doesn’t use free weights.

Myth #5

“Machine movements do not rely on stabilizing muscles as much, which is important as older adults may be somewhat deconditioned and will not have sufficiently developed muscles for complex free weight exercises.”

It is true that some adults are deconditioned, but for those of us who train regularly, this is simply not applicable.

Myth #6

“At the age of 60, the body is mostly incapable of building large quantities of new muscle.”

This has to be the most ridiculous comment I have ever read.

Myth #7

“The main goal of working out should be to build some strength and reduce the risk for disease (primarily heart disease). Therefore, a workout should simply be to get the blood flowing and to build some strength without causing any serious injury in the process.”

If my trainer ever said this to me, I’d fire him.

Myth #8

“Supplementing protein shakes is unnecessary and pointless. At this age, the body can’t digest and absorb protein easily, which will result in excess bodily waste and weight gain from supplementation.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry for this little idiot.

SUMMARY

20-year-olds haven’t a clue about fitness routines for adult athletes, nor do they have any knowledge of our psychological predispositions.

In my gym, I routinely challenge college kids to jump in with me for sets, but so many have suffered injuries that they rarely show up anymore.

🙂

So, what REALLY are the best workouts for baby Boomers?

ANSWER: It’s a rhetorical question.

Relevance in Retrospect

Many of you will recognize the person in this photo, not that he cares…

“…You believe that what you are doing is of great importance and that it is affecting mankind wall-to-wall. And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that wasn’t true at all. (laughter) It was just silliness… I realized, geez, I don’t think I care that much about television anymore. I feel foolish for having been misguided by my own ego for so many years.” David Letterman

~~~

At the end of a long career, many of us look back and wonder whether what we accomplished was such a big deal after all.

In other words, did we stack up?

I’ve noticed that many of those who come up short are in the entertainment industry, where ridiculous sums are paid to people who couldn’t hold a normal job if their lives depended on it.

I’m one of them, though I have to say I did hold a normal job for the whole of 3 months after graduating college.

It was at that point in my life when I realized I was going to have to go it alone, freelancing as a photographer – and, at the time – copywriter.

I bring this up because entertainment is where people who can’t make it anywhere else go.

It’s not for lack of intelligence, talent, tenacity and perseverance.

It’s for lack of fitting in anywhere else, including everywhere else.

No wonder those who are actually successful in entertainment are referred to as geniuses.

This said, most don’t consider success in entertainment a tremendous accomplishment in the context of mankind, and I guess this is where I’m going.

Letterman looks back and sees a talk show host who interviewed celebrities in exchange for tens of millions of dollars.

He doesn’t see a brain surgeon who saved lives; a forensic anthropologist working at the Smithsonian, or a research scientist searching for the cure for cancer.

On some level I’m sure he’d prefer people see him in proper context, particularly given the fact that he could buy and sell them a thousand times.

It’s embarrassing. I get it.

Recently, I had a conversation with a 72-year-old man who turned out to be a world-renowned organ transplant surgeon with 12 medical books to his credit.

The man was unassuming, but not without presence.

There was gravity in his tone which I found a bit disconcerting, honestly.

Who was this guy? And why was he not pretending to be someone he was not like so many others who never feel complete without a good back story?

He summed everything up in a sentence or two, and just walked away.

That was it.

It got me thinking that no matter what any of us do, we all play a role in what constitutes the totality of the human experience, whether it’s science, art, music, literature…or entertainment.

I don’t know that he needed to reflect on any of this, as his contributions could be counted one life after another.

But I’m sure that in his home one would find art on the walls, literature on the shelves, and memories of his favorite Letterman interviews.

In this sense, entertainment isn’t so ephemeral after all.

Nonetheless, entertainment is the one area of human existence that doesn’t require a formal education, a clean law enforcement record, or green light from the American Psychiatric Association.

No wonder Letterman got paid so much.

Feeling Blue About Your Age? Try This.

When I’m at the gym training, older people [my age and much older] look at me like I’m out of my mind.

They’re only partly right.

I am driven to perform in an abnormal way for men my age.

I guess they assume I a recovering drug addict swapping addictions, or someone in therapy.

Like I said, partly right.

Long story short, I’m an outsider in every sense of the word.

First, my workouts look like actual workouts, rather than strolls around a track on a failing hip, porous bones, and bulging discs.

Some refer to such people as blood sacks.

To the point, I could trip and fall in the gym and the worse case scenario might be a spilled sports drink, not the complete annihilation of my skeletal structure – hence blood sack.

This is where you want to be at this stage of the game.

Then there’s the mental toughness that working out reinforces.

You feel in possession of yourself and relevant in the context of survival.

This is a big deal to older men, believe me.

If you feel weak, you feel irrelevant no matter what else you have going on in your favor.

While success is a great thing, success and good health are better.

Just ask anyone who doesn’t have either, or both.

The Inter-Generational Dating Equation [and make no mistake…it is an equation of both heart and common sense]

From the movie, “Irrational Man”

I have cited an article from “Mother Jones,” but I did found something worthy of mention in the context of the older man/younger woman meme.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/01/sugardaddycom-old-dogs-new-tricks

What happens when you get older is that people expect more from you in the way of cash. It’s how most guys validate themselves after time has taken it’s pound of flesh and what’s left is an investment portfolio.

With this in mind, younger women who date older men usually do so for the lifestyle.

This is not to say that they don’t appreciate the other qualities [i.e., maturity, experience, appreciation, etc…], but without the security, we’re pretty stuck dating women who look like they walked off the set of an arthritis commercial.

There are exceptions, of course, but not many.

Just run the actuarial numbers and this will start to make sense.

Anyway, I have an acquaintance who dates a much younger woman.

He pays her a set stipend each week in exchange for a girlfriend experience.

But guys who front-load like this are on thin ice.

They guide their decisions by the old bird in the hand mantra as if the bird in question weren’t a Tyrannosaur in drag.

The only way to avoid inevitable catastrophe is to let the relationship evolve over time, to stop pretending that your “girlfriend experience” is just a transaction.

This is because, after a while, it starts to feel real – to you, not her.

That’s the rub.

It’s fine to help someone out after you’ve gotten to know them well and trust their intentions.

But NEVER, EVER use your imagination when dealing with someone of motive.

As for the dollar bills in question, it’s been my experience that such men pay anywhere from $6000-$8000/ month – up to about $300,000/year for services rendered – at which point they usually marry with a golden parachute built into the pre-nup.

Is it prostitution?

Yes, of course it is.

My friends usually pay their women in cash and receive sexual favors in return.

But it’s also what’s referred to as a functional relationship by today’s standards among the older moneyed class.

The abnormal and maladjusted ones fall in love and live happily ever after, but I digress.

Advertising Agencies Fail to Capture Upscale Baby Boomer Market

I wake up this morning and head to the kitchen where the television is tuned to the news.

This is generally not a good thing as I prefer cartoons in the morning.

This notwithstanding, I’m in a good mood because today is my birthday and, for whatever reason, I’m not depressed about it.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that if I see one more pocket catheter ad I’m going to hurl!

Now they make them in “designer” colors and deliver them in discrete packaging that resembles a sex toy.

Then there’s this little kid, disabled and begging for money, the violins whining in the background.

It’s like a one-two punch and I haven’t had coffee.

The kid runs the numbers and says that for a contribution of just $30 a month, you can his ass.

“That’s just $1 a day to save me and kids like me, or just 50 cents a day if you spread it out over the course of 2 months. And for a one-time contribution, it’s almost nothing at all.”

But I’m still not budging because I hate the fact that advertising agencies use kids as weapons for cash.

Then there are the cancer patients, all with stories of triumph to share after visiting this hospital or that.

And did I mention wounded vets in wheelchairs, brain damaged, trying to live with dignity in the face of colossal odds?

Rounding things out are the personal injury attorneys asking you whether or not you’ve recently died as a result of taking this or that drug as you may be entitled to compensation.

Call 1-800-BAD-DRUG or some such shit.

It’s brutal.

I’m a Baby Boomer.

They got that part right.

But I don’t use pocket catheters – or catheters at all.

I’m not disabled.

I give to the charities of my choosing with or without the ads.

I also have a attorneys for a wide range of issues, should anything come up.

So I have no idea who the hell these ads are targeting.

And that guy from “24” who keeps telling me to buy gold is an embarrassment.

It is very clear to me that these ads are focused in on the infirm, the elderly, and the flat out dead who apparently still watch television.

So where are the ads of interest to me and my peers?

They keep talking Baby Boomer this, Baby Boomer that and I’m still out of the loop.

It’s like my entire generation is invisible to Madison Avenue.

With this in mind, here’s what I want to hear about because, unlike the others, it’s relevant [and therefore not an embarrassment] to me and my peers:

1] Luxury hotel properties.

2] Automobiles most of us drive [i.e., not Buick].

3] Home automation systems [Think security from a cellphone].

4] Inter-Generational dating sites [i.e., Duh]

5] Private-only healthcare providers [Why wait in line?]

6] 5-star home service providers, including all of them [i.e., where’s the best plumber when you need one?]

7] Spa and wellness centers [i.e., places to relax, rejuvenate, and restore].

8] Disease prevention and nutrition [not ads with people in wheelchairs dying from one thing or another].

10] Anything that doesn’t involve retirement, which most of us consider “death in slow motion,” [UrbanDystrophy, the book].

And finally, #11:

11] Whether it’s AARP – or the CDC – please dear God, hire Baby Boomers in advertising who actually get it.

Thank you.

Every Woman Over 50 Should Practice Bisexuality [According to Huffington Post Article]

A 2014 article in the Huffington Post written by Arlene Schindler suggests that older women should explore their bisexuality as an alternative to their oftentimes frustrating experiences with men.

One path is referred to as “affectional bonding” or AB.

No wonder they outlive us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arlene-schindler-/cuddle-parties_b_4800176.html

The findings of the latest National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) reveals that the number of women reporting same-sex partners has increased from 1.8% to 7.9% over the past 20 years. Sexual lifestyles in Britain have changed substantially in the past 60 years, with changes in behavior seeming to be greater in women than men, most notably the continuation of sexual activity into later life.

After enough time passes and older women find themselves unable to establish relationships with quality, age appropriate men, “affectional bonding” begins to make sense.

According to the article, most women are already naturally bi-curious when it comes to sex; 60 percent were sexually attracted to other women; 45 percent had kissed a woman and 50 percent had fantasies about the same sex. This suggests that women may be more capable of finding people attractive, no matter what orientation they claim. Additionally, it becomes more pronounced as they get older. Approaching mid-life, “AB” makes a lot of sense.

And now, for the anti-male punchline:

Ladies, tired of the hairy chest? Try the softer touch. Has erectile dysfunction got you down and disappointed? Try reframing your options. With affectional bonding, enjoy everything you ever wanted without the messy clean-up.

You can read the rest of the article for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

OVERVIEW

Whether you’re single or in a relationship, you know by now that nothing is a panacea.

Single-hood is tough because you feel emotionally disconnected from the world. It can drain your spirit, fracture your faith in humanity, jade your perceptions.

But the same can be said of toxic relationships.

So we struggle to find balance no matter where it takes us.

Having said this, for men in my particularly peer group, I suggest you contact your attorney and investment counselor before doing anything where the consequences are more expensive than a transient escape.

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